【推荐1】In modern society there is a great deal of argument about competition. Some value it highly, believing that it is responsible for social progress and prosperity. Others say that competition is bad; that it sets one person against another; that it leads to unfriendly relationship between people.

I have taught many children who held the belief that their self-worth relied on how well they performed at tennis and other skills. For them, playing well and winning are often life-and-death affairs. In their single-minded pursuit of success, the development of many other human qualities is sadly forgotten.

However, while some seem to be lost in the desire to succeed, others take an opposite attitude. In a culture which values only the winner and pays no attention to the ordinary players, they strongly blame competition. Among the most vocal are youngsters who have suffered under competitive pressure from their parents or society. Teaching these young people, I often observe in them a desire to fail. They seem to seek failure by not trying to win or achieve success. By not trying, they always have an excuse: “I may have lost, but it doesn’t matter, because I didn’t try.” What is not usually admitted by themselves is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, that would mean a lot. Such a loss would be a measure of their worth. Clearly, this belief is the same as that of the true competitors who try to prove themselves. Both are based on the mistaken belief that one’s self-respect relies on how well one performs in comparison with others. Both are afraid of not being valued. Only as this basic and often troublesome fear begins to dissolve can we discover a new meaning in competition.

【推荐2】Some people think that success is only for those with talent or those who grow up in the right family, and others believe that success mostly comes down to luck. I’m not going to say luck, talent, and circumstances don’t come into play because they do. Some people are born into the right family while others are born with great intelligence, and that’s just the reality of how life is.

However, to succeed in life, one first needs to set a goal and then gradually make it more practical. And, in addition to that, in order to get really good at something, one needs to spend at least 10,000 hours studying and practicing. To become great at certain things, it’ll require even more time, time that most people won’t put in.

This is a big reason why many successful people advise you to do something you love. If you don’t enjoy what you do, it is going to feel like unbearable pain and will likely make you quit well before you ever become good at it.

When you see people exhibiting some great skills or having achieved great success, you know that they have put in a huge part of their life to get there at a huge cost. It’s sometimes easy to think they got lucky or they were born with some rare talent, but thinking that way does you no good, and there’s a huge chance that you’re wrong anyway.

Whatever you do, if you want to become great at it, you need to work day in and day out, almost to the point of addiction, and over a long period of time. If you’re not willing to put in the time and work, don’t expect to receive any rewards. Consistent, toil (苦干) won’t guarantee you the level of success you may want, but it will guarantee that you will become really good at whatever it is you put all that work into.

【推荐1】The Cost of Higher Education

Individuals (个人) should pay for their higher education.

In general, a university education is of huge and direct benefit to the individual. Whether they are majoring in geography, geometry or any other subject, graduates earn more than non-graduates. Meanwhile, social mobility is ever more dependent on having a degree. However, only some people have it. So the individual, not the taxpayers should pay for it. There are pressing calls on the resources (资源) of the government. Using taxpayers' money to help small number of people to earn high incomes in the future is not one of them.

Full government funding (资助) is not very good for universities. Adam Smith worked in a Scottish university whose teachers lived off student fees. He knew and looked down upon 18th-century Oxford, the grand university having much glory, where the academics lived comfortably off the income received from the government. Guaranteed salaries, Smith argued, were the enemy of hard work and when the academics were lazy and incompetent, the students grew similarly lazy in a gradual way.

If students have to pay for their education, I guess they not only work harder, but also demand more from their teachers and have a better grasp of the subjects. And their teachers have to keep them satisfied. If that means taking teaching seriously, and giving less time to their own research interests, that is surely something to celebrate.

Many people believe that higher education should be free because it is good for the economy (经济). Many graduates clearly do contribute to national wealth, but so do all the businesses that invest (投资) and create jobs. If you believe that the government should be generous enough to pay for higher education because graduates are economically productive, you should also believe that the government should pay part of business costs. Anyone promising to create jobs should receive a gift of capital（资金） from the government to invest.

Therefore, it is the individual, not the government who should pay for their university education.

【推荐2】On June 17, 1774, the officials from Maryland and Virginia held a talk with the Indians of the Six Nations. The Indians were invited to send boys to William and Mary College. In a letter the next day they refused the offer as follows:

We know that you have a high opinion of the kind of learning taught in your colleges, and that the costs of living of our young men, while with you, would be very expensive to you. We are convinced that you mean to do us good by your proposal; and we thank you heartily. But you must know that different nations have different ways of looking at things, and you will therefore not be offended if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same as yours. We have had some experience of it. Several of our young people were formerly brought up at the college of the northern provinces: they were taught all your sciences; but when they came back to us, they were bad manners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods — they were totally good for nothing.

We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though we refuse to accept it; and, to show our grateful sense of it, if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons, we will take care of their education, teach them all we know, and make men of them.